“There was never a traditional campaign. We’ve always wanted to tell stories in different ways. […] Going back to the very beginning of Black Ops 4 development, we never had set out to make a traditional campaign. We always started from the place of, we’re going to make something different with this game that was going to be inspired by how our community was interacting with Black Ops 3 and the games over the years. We see more and more players spending more time with multiplayer and zombies, not just in the game, but out of the game, streaming and talking about it in forums.”

I’m a bit skeptical about Bunting’s assertion that they never meant to do a single-player campaign. Treyarch clearly cares a lot about the Black Ops storyline and universe, so it seems strange they would toss it aside so casually. But hey, maybe they really did want to try something new.

Elsewhere in the interview, Bunting dances around Black Ops 4’s obvious Overwatch inspirations, and provides a few more details about the new Blackout battle royale mode. The Blackout map will include various “hotspots” inspired by past Call of Duty multiplayer maps, and Treyarch is “committed to 60 frames per second” for the mode, although there might be “circumstances where you might dip down.” Bunting also continued his evasiveness about Blackout’s player count.

If you’d like to know more about Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, you can check out tons of footage and info, right here.